Everyone Thinks My Best Friend Went Missing. I Know What Really Happened.

By Thought Catalog,

I never meant for it to happen.

I know what little good that does now but I have to say that every day otherwise I’ll totally lose it. If I don’t remind myself that it was an accident, the careless actions of a little boy who had no idea the hurt he could do, that last shred of sanity will slip away like a scrap of paper caught in the wind.It was 1993. I had recently turned 11, that age where boys start to get hair in strange places and become incredibly mean to somehow compensate for it. I hadn’t gotten it quite yet – the hair nor the meanness – but I could sense it spreading through my classmates like some exotic virus. A few of them shot up a few inches in height, towering over me in gym class; Jeff Porter was sporting what he called a mustache but was really just a few weird kinky sprouts above his lip.

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Trace the scars life has left you. It will remind you that at one point, you fought for something. You believed.

Trace the scars life has left you. It will remind you that at one point, you fought for something. You believed.

“You are the only person who gets to decide if you are happy or not—do not put your happiness into the hands of other people. Do not make it contingent on their acceptance of you or their feelings for you. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if someone dislikes you or if someone doesn’t want to be with you. All that matters is that you are happy with the person you are becoming. All that matters is that you like yourself, that you are proud of what you are putting out into the world. You are in charge of your joy, of your worth. You get to be your own validation. Please don’t ever forget that.” — Bianca Sparacino

Excerpted from The Strength In Our Scars by Bianca Sparacino.

Trace the scars life has left you. It will remind you that at one point, you fought for something. You believed.

Trace the scars life has left you. It will remind you that at one point, you fought for something. You believed.

“You are the only person who gets to decide if you are happy or not—do not put your happiness into the hands of other people. Do not make it contingent on their acceptance of you or their feelings for you. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if someone dislikes you or if someone doesn’t want to be with you. All that matters is that you are happy with the person you are becoming. All that matters is that you like yourself, that you are proud of what you are putting out into the world. You are in charge of your joy, of your worth. You get to be your own validation. Please don’t ever forget that.” — Bianca Sparacino

Excerpted from The Strength In Our Scars by Bianca Sparacino.

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